From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc of roughly 1,500 km across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the largest mountain range in Europe. They provide the habitat for the largest populations in Europe of brown bears, wolves, chamois and lynxes, with the highest concentration in Romania, as well as over one third of all European plant species.

The chain of mountain ranges stretches in an arc from the Czech Republic in the northwest to Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine and Romania in the east, to the Iron Gates on the Danube River between Romania and Serbia in the south. The highest range within the Carpathians are the Tatras, on the border of Poland and Slovakia, where the highest peaks exceed 2600 meters in elevation, followed by the Southern Carpathians in Romania, where the highest peaks exceed 2500 meters in elevation. The Carpathian chain is usually divided into three major parts: the Western Carpathians (Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary), the Eastern Carpathians (Southeastern Poland, Eastern Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania) and the Southern Carpathians (Romania, Serbia.